Playing rugby helped me with Offaly... and with life
GROWING up in Banagher in County Offaly, I was eight years old when I got involved in the local GAA club, St Rynagh’s. The power base for hurling was Banagher, while Cloghan, a few miles out the road, was the football stronghold. St Rynagh’s ran school teams in the local national school, whereas now clubs or county boards put games development officers into schools. We did all Gaelic games activity through the club.
But in the mornings and after lunch we played soccer. We played basketball and I did a lot of athletics and Community Games stuff.
Like every other sports-mad child in Ireland, what was on television dictated what we played. If racing was on, we were out jumping our own fences. When Wimbledon was on, we were smacking tennis balls around. Banagher had a tennis club with a grass court and we had a hard court in the school. You’d watch the rugby, pick up a ball and smash into a lad.
There was no structure to it – no tennis or basketball coaches or drills – just playing for the fun of it. By the time I was nine or 10, I was obsessed with sport.
My dad loved boxing. This was the era of Muhammad Ali. I was a child in the 1970s when he was building his reputation as ‘The Greatest’ and you had the hype around the heavyweight battles with Joe Frazier.
Sport had such an influence. The first book I read was Ali’s biography.
The Olympics was huge, too. Indeed, my life then was informed by my parents. My mother did the driving to all the matches and my father loved athletics when I took that up. I remember winning an Under-14 final against Birr and then running in a cross country, which I also won, on the same day.
The big change came when I went to Garbally College, a boarding school in Ballinasloe. I played organised rugby for the first time, while there was also squash and handball. With hurling added in, I was out playing them seven days a week – anything to miss classes!
Hard as it might be to believe, I was a quiet, shy 12-year-old from Banagher and very small for my age. But I rocked up for Junior Schools rugby trials at U15. I had two U14 hurling medals in Offaly, I couldn’t see the big deal?
I ended up playing on the first year team and later going on to win two Junior Cups and two Senior Cups. I won the Connacht Colleges juvenile ‘A’ hurling title, the juvenile ‘A’ football title (we beat St Jarlath’s in the final) and the Junior Cup rugby title. There were a couple of us on all three teams.
There was no sense of trepidation or fear. I always thought there’s an element of rugby and hurling that go hand-in-hand – that peripheral vision where you have to see the space and be able to transfer the ball quickly.
I was still trying to play everything by my Leaving Cert year and we won those two Senior Cups in rugby and two senior colleges titles, which was a big thing.
Birr beat us in an All-Ireland colleges hurling semi-final. A lot of us then went on together with Offaly in ’86 to win the minor All-Ireland.
As you get older, it gets more serious. If I had my time back, I probably wouldn’t have played as much from third level on. Some of the stuff I did was crazy. In college in Waterford one year, I think I was on 13 or 14 teams between all the different codes and age grades.
In 1989, I ended up being very sick for a time – I developed Stevens-Johnson syndrome – so there’s a balance there.
I did win a Towns Cup in rugby and played All-Ireland League with Buccaneers late in my 20s when I had the time and learned how to juggle things better.
So I’d encourage younger players to play everything. Not just for the fundamental skills but for development – both sporting and personal. You meet all sorts of different people and open up to all the different aspects of playing. I’m sure all of those different things contributed in some way to winning All-Irelands with Offaly.
Once you come out of minor or that school age, of course you have to make decisions. But I look at the progress of Jack Regan as another example after he signed a three-year rugby contract with the Ospreys on the back of making a breakthrough in New Zealand.
His father Daithí is a great friend of mine. I had Jack with the Offaly U14 hurlers.
It was obvious at that stage that he could be a serious rugby player. Jack played hurling and football – and chess was one of his mainstays! You couldn’t see him inheriting that – at least, not from his father’s side!
He gave the rugby a shot and the move to New Zealand this past year and playing with Super Rugby’s Highlanders has been the making of him. Was it the cultural change? I played a lot with former Ireland and Connacht rugby player Eric Elwood at schools level. He went over to New Zealand for a year to play, on Warren Gatland’s advice, and came back a different man.
Jack had a bad injury while on the books with Ulster but has found himself out there. How much boils down to that raw love of the game? It’s hardly a coincidence that he is going back to Wales now where there is that same love and passion for the game. The Celt is in him.
You have to have that love of the game.
Shane Lowry ties into that. What he’s doing on the world stage is incredible. And his heart is in Offaly. I think it’s been brilliant for us since he came on board as an Official Partner to Offaly GAA.
Our results have been very good since – and his, too. His dad Brendan told me recently that he checks the results straight after our matches on a Saturday or Sunday – even as he prepares for big tournaments – and gets such a lift to see the positive results with promotion to Division 1 in hurling and to Division 2 in football.
It’s great to hear. And he played various different sports on the way up, too.
To have that ambition – that drive and belief in yourself – is so important. No matter the game.
‘YOUNGSTERS SHOULD PLAY EVERYTHING AND THEN MAKE A CHOICE’